NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF NONCONVENTIONAL WELLS USING ADAPTIVE FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS

In recent years, non-conventional wells (NCWs), such as horizontal wel ls and drainhole drilling, have gained popularity as a means for enhan cing the production and overall life of existing reservoirs. The prese nt work investigates the benefits of using adaptive meshing in the mod eling of NCWs. In particular, we employ special hp-adaptive finite ele ment techniques (i.e. simultaneous manipulation of mesh size and polyn omial order) to model the reservoir, as well as the wellbore, without relying on approximate well models and/or productivity /injectivity in dex calculations. Reservoir and wellbore flows are solved in a consist ent, coupled manner using unstructured meshes so as to provide the gre atest flexibility in the geometric representation. several examples ar e presented which highlight the flexibility and accuracy of the approa ch.